


Problem Solving

by venndaai



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Background Relationship, Female Friendship, Gen, Moral Dilemmas, Neuroatypical Characters, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-17
Updated: 2014-04-17
Packaged: 2018-01-19 17:02:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1477279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/pseuds/venndaai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SHIELD goes down. Pepper Potts deals with the aftermath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Problem Solving

**Author's Note:**

> Some slight casual ableism at one point in this fic. Also disclaimer, I actually have no idea what CEOs do, so I'm probably totally messing up Pepper here. Oh well.

When all the files leak, that first day in July, Tony gets loudly agitated. Pepper's at a meeting, but the minute she gets out she gets a call from Bruce. “I, uh, wanted to give you a friendly heads-up,” he says. “Some major shit has happened, and Tony's yelling about it.”

She's already paging to her itinerary. “How major? Do you want me to come over?” She'd rather not have to cancel dinner with the board, and she'd been hoping to have an hour to herself before that.

“Check the news,” he tells her, tersely, and okay, that isn't a good sign.

“I'll call you back in a minute,” she says.

“If you are coming over, make it fast. I'm kind of a captive audience here, and the angry mumbling is very irritating.”

She ends up rescheduling the dinner for the next day because if SHIELD really has gone down there will have to be several new topics on the discussion list, and the board is much more amenable when they've been plied with very expensive food.

An hour later she's in the parking garage of Stark Tower. “Jarvis, where are they?” she asks while she's closing the door of her car. It still throws her sometimes, not having to check if cars are locked.

“Floor 89, Miss Potts.”

“Has Tony annoyed Bruce into hulking out yet?”

“It would appear not, Miss Potts.”

She browses Twitter on the ride up, tries to get a sense of public opinion. This is going to be a mess.

Pepper finds them in the lounge. Bruce looks exhausted, slouched on the sleek black couch. He doesn't smile when he sees her, but she doesn't expect him to. Bruce smiles when he's angry or upset or being ironic, not out of pleasure.

Tony is bouncing a rubber triacontahedron against the wall, and it's really annoying that she knows that word. She is not actually a Renaissance woman by nature, and the stranger demands of her job are starting to be irritating.

“Hi, Pepper,” Bruce says, loudly and pointedly, although Tony is being silent for the moment.

“Hey,” she replies. “Did you guys have plans for dinner?”

“Dinner?” Tony snaps. The bouncing is rhythmic and it's already grinding on Pepper's brain. Bruce Banner must have the patience of a saint. “How can you talk about dinner when all of, all of this, ridiculousness is happening, Pepper have you been watching the news, three of their fancy-ass helicarriers crashed into the Potomac, and naturally they're doing a coverup but there are already witnesses saying SHIELD fired on their own carriers, and Fury is not answering my very insistent emails, and even I don't really know how many corporate secrets are in those files, I knew collaborating with those assholes was a bad idea-”

Pepper reaches out and catches the triacontahedron on the rebound. She squeezes its reassuring rubbery surface. “We can't make plans on an empty stomach, baby.”

“We have dried snap peas,” he says.

Bruce holds up a bag. “They are pretty addictive.”

Pepper throws the thing at Tony, feels a rush of simple pleasure when he catches it. The new reflexes at least are something they can share together. “Dinner,” she says, in a tone that brokes no argument.

They order pizza to the penthouse, and eat it on paper plates, surrounded by printouts of the SHIELD data Jarvis deems most relevant. Tony lies on his stomach and she sits cross-legged and they argue about public statements and the probable effect on stocks and the new state of global security, which is kind of terrifying because who gave Tony this knowledge and who gave him the right to share it with her. There's some information she'd rather not know, even if she is dating the man who “privatized world peace”.

Jarvis places endless calls to every SHIELD agent in their address books, none of which are answered. Rhodey's number also goes to answering machine. Bruce sits on the balcony watching the sun set on Manhattan. Eventually Pepper sighs, and gets up, and joins him.

“Funny,” he says, with his little not-laugh thing he does. “I was terrified of SHIELD. But I'm even more afraid of the idea of them being gone.”

“The world keeps changing,” she says. “I'm scared, too.” She puts her arm around his shoulders.

“What, do I have to clean this up myself?” Tony calls.

Bruce gets up. “I'll do it. No, let me. I need to feel useful right now.”

He stacks the pages neatly, slides them into files, puts laptops and tablets back in their proper places, throws out paper plates. Pepper is dead tired. She pulls off her shirt, and then can't stop herself from collapsing onto the bed. She'll just have to get up in a minute to do a full bedtime routine, but this bed is a lot more comfortable than the one in her Financial District apartment. She feels herself sink into it.

Tony joins her first, and then Bruce, when he's done tidying up. “I am so tired,” she groans into Bruce's arm.

“Hey,” Tony says, and then they're all mushed together in a warm, comforting pile. “I'm scared, too,” he confesses. “But we'll be okay. We always are.”

Bruce's only response is to tighten his arms around Pepper's stomach, which she really doesn't mind at all. She remembers, suddenly, the way the night was darker in her solitary room, those weeks when Tony was in the desert. She'd slept curled up next to her phone, though she knew Jarvis would have woken her if there'd been any news. She hadn't wanted news that could only be bad.

But it hadn't been bad. Tony had survived his ordeal, had come out of the desert transformed into someone she could finally see as a complete human being. And her nighttime fears had changed, from overdoses in hotel rooms or flashy car crashes to alien invasions, kidnappers, a small blue light in Tony's chest.

Things keep on changing. She rests her ear on Tony's bare chest, feels the steady beat of a healthy heart. Tony is probably as safe as he'll ever be, with Extremis-improved everything and two superpowered partners to look after him. And as for Pepper, she's not in that single bed in that dark room any more. The world is a much more dangerous place than it was five years ago, but she's not alone in it, she thinks, and with that, she drifts into sleep.

 

* * *

 

  
Day number two is when Tony takes a look at Project Insight, and becomes very quietly furious. Pepper checks her StarkPhone between meetings. Bruce keeps sending her short video clips of Tony hunched over a computer, eerily silent. “Am becoming creeped out, please advise,” he texts. Pepper sends some message back that she soon forgets. It's one of the more hectic days of her life, particularly as Day Two also sends her Maria Hill.

Pepper usually doesn't handle human resources directly, but Janumala, who does interviews, has an excellent memory for faces and calls Pepper down immediately. A promotion is probably in order, after she finds out what Fury's second in command is doing in her offices.

Pepper stares at the other woman from across a desk. She's as composed as ever.

“I assume you're not going to tell me what happened to your previous place of employment,” Pepper says, as an opening volley.

“Classified, I'm afraid,” is the calm response.

Classified by who, Pepper wants to know. The classifiers are gone, so who's doing the labeling?

“I hope you don't expect me to trust you with confidential information,” Pepper tells Hill.

Hill smiles. “Nothing of the sort. I was actually looking for a job as a security manager.”

Pepper gives her a narrow look.

“Miss Potts,” Hill says, folding her hands and leaning forward. “You have quite a few charity endeavors located in unstable areas, yes? And I do still have some connections. My resume shows I have experience in organizing security operations, and I am willing to train your people in SHIELD techniques.”

Pepper gives her a sweet smile of her own. “And how do I know you aren't working for HYDRA?”

“Agent Romanoff will vouch for me,” Hill says. As if that's enough. Maybe it is. It bothers her that Hill knows that but-

“Natasha is all right?” she says, business exterior slipping for a second.

“When I last saw her she was fine,” Hill says, and there's a huge weight off Pepper's shoulders.

She starts typing up a contract. “You would have to work here in the District, at least temporarily. I don't think Mr. Stark would react well to your presence at this time.”

“That's perfectly fine,” says Hill graciously.

This is probably a really bad idea.

Scratch that, it is definitely a bad idea, because she knows Tony would go off the rails if he found out about this, and that's kind of why she wants to do it.

She never claimed to be reasonable.

 

* * *

 

 

Her phone buzzes. _he's started with the minibar,_ Bruce texts.

She pushes the phone to sleep mode and rests her chin on it, balanced by her fingers. “Wonderful,” she whispers to herself.

She tries calling Rhodey again but she senses it's hopeless. Whatever the military has him doing, they don't want interruptions from Stark Industries.

But she can't postpone the dinner a second time, so she doesn't get to the tower until ten, and she's in a bad mood, frustration over traffic mixing toxically with worry over Tony.

They're by the bar on the top floor, or at least, their backs are leaning against it. There's an empty bottle at Tony's feet, but it's only one, which is something of a relief. It looks like he's in the middle of an attack, breathing too fast, hands pressed to the carpet like they're glued there. Bruce is sitting a foot and a half away, talking to him quietly.

Pepper sets down her bag and waits until his breathing slows a bit, and he looks up and says, wretchedly, “Pepper?”

She goes to him then, lets him press his forehead against her clavicle, enfolds his tired head.

“He found the jackpot,” Bruce explains. “Project Insight. Helicarriers, like the one we were on, but more, and- and armed. They were meant to- take out threats.” He's breathing slowly and deeply. He's angry about this, too.

“Me,” says Tony, muffled by her sternum. “They couldn't have done it without me, they.” Slow breath. “They had me upgrade the carriers with better repulsors. For lift! I thought it was harmless, I was so, so fucking excited about it...”

She strokes his hair, casting about for something to say.

“Pepper,” he mumbles, pleadingly. “They tricked me into building drones for them, Pep. Drones. Do you understand?”

The pleading hurts her. She remembers it, from when he first came out of the desert, when he tried to explain his vast revelation to everyone he cared about, and was shocked and confused when they didn't want to listen. She still doesn't really get it, not really, but she understands how important his lines in the sand are, to him. “Yeah, Tony,” she says. She wonders when her personal moral compass stopped giving out coherent readings, when she started to judge her actions by their probable outcomes instead.

“You can't take responsibility,” says Bruce. “You can't let it- fester. You didn't program those carriers, you didn't plug in targets or press big red buttons.”

“I never fired a missile either,” Tony says. “But there are villages that aren't there any more because of things I built. So please, don't talk to me about responsibility.”

“Okay,” Bruce says, and she echoes, “Okay,” and they sit there until Tony can breathe again and then Pepper puts all the alcohol in a cabinet and locks it. It's a purely symbolic gesture, since there isn't a lock on Earth Tony couldn't get by with enough time and patience, but it's a symbol of trust. On both sides.

Then Pepper has to get back to work, so she leaves Tony with Bruce and sits down to write some unpleasant emails she's been putting off. For the past year she's been convincing investors that it's worth it to rebuild New York City, despite the possibility of another alien attack. It's going to be even harder going now that SHIELD's gone, along with the sense of security it had provided.

If she also takes the opportunity to channel a few more millions to the Maria Stark Foundation's war relief programs, it's definitely not because of a guilty conscience.

 

* * *

 

 

On Day Three she gets a call from an unlisted number. She picks up and it's Natasha's voice on the end of the line. “Sorry I didn't call sooner.”

Pepper's working at the Tower today, so she covers the phone for a moment and says, “Jarvis, I need privacy.”

“Absolutely, Miss Potts,” says the rich voice, and then silence as the AI turns off all the little recording devices in her area.

Pepper puts the phone back to her ear. “Natasha?”

“Yeah.”

She sounds okay, but she probably sounds the same no matter what happens. Natasha is a harder nut to crack than Tony Stark and Bruce Banner put together. That isn't going to stop her from trying, of course.

“Where are you?”

There's a pause, then: “D.C. Taking care of some unfinished business.”

That's a surprise. Pepper had expected her to be farther afield. “Can you tell me what's going on?”

A much longer silence, and Pepper has time for all sorts of regrets. Natasha's voice, when it comes, is flat. “You haven't read my file yet.”

Pepper doesn't make a habit of lying to herself. She'd gone into the asset folder and dug around until she found the one marked Black Widow. It's sitting on her personal hard drive. Unopened.

  
“How do you know?”

“Because if you'd read it, you wouldn't be so friendly to me.”

That sends a shiver down her spine. She knows, in the abstract, that Natalie her perfect charming assistant is Natasha the ruthless SHIELD agent is some other name with an unpleasant past.

But there is a violent reckless part of Pepper and that part desperately wants Natasha as a friend.

“I really need to know what's happened,” she hears herself say, “and you're the only one I trust.”

“Okay.” Natasha sighs. “I'll give you a short version now, and a longer version later, but in return you have to do something for me, and you have to do it before you read the file.”

“Deal,” Pepper promises, probably quicker than she should have.

“SHIELD was infiltrated. The enemy changed the targets for Insight. Captain Rogers and a... friend managed to take them down before they could activate. Then Fury and I destroyed SHIELD.”

Well, that's a start, she thinks. “Is Captain Rogers and this friend all right?”

“Actually,” Natasha says, “that's part of the favor you're going to do me.”

 

* * *

 

 

A few hours later, there's another text, and it takes her a moment to register that it's not from Bruce but from Tony. _get on up here._ So she does.

The two of them are sitting in the lounge watching something on the big screen that looks very official, very military and very classified. They're munching on something that she hopes isn't popcorn. Popcorn gets ground into the carpet.

“Do I want to know how we're watching this?”

“Probably not,” Tony says.

“I talked to Natasha,” Pepper starts to say, and then stops, because Natasha's on the screen now, staring into the camera like she can see the three of them on the other side.

No one's particularly surprised when she gets up and leaves halfway through the tribunal.

“There's no way Nick Fury is dead,” Tony says. “Right? There's no way that's true.”

“You're probably right,” Pepper agrees.

“Wait,” Bruce says. “You talked to her? Natasha, I mean?”

“Just a couple of hours ago.” Pepper sits down next to Tony and starts to play with his hair. “She wants a favor.”

“I'm not going to like this,” Tony correctly deduces.

“Excuse me,” Jarvis says smoothly, “but Colonel Rhodes is on the private line.”

Tony starts and reaches for the nearest phone but Pepper deftly swipes it first. She's walking into the hallway even as she brings the phone up to her ear and says, “James?”

“Is that- Pepper? Hey, look, I'm really sorry about missing all those calls.”

“I understand,” she says, gentle and soft and friendly. “I can only imagine how busy you must be.”

“Ha, you can say that again. It's a mess over-”

She cuts him off. “I just want to remind you, James, that you are flying around in a piece of proprietary Stark technology. Ordinarily I wouldn't mention it, but Tony's been in a bit of a mood lately, and you never know, he might ask for it back.”

There's a pause.

“What do you want from me, Pepper?”

Pepper likes James Rhodes. They've been through a lot together, as Tony Stark's unofficial minders. But James Rhodes is a loyal man, and so Pepper doesn't trust him. He can't put friendships first. It's perfectly understandable.

“I'm not asking you for anything, James. I'm just giving you a friendly warning, in case you were maybe planning on relaying some kind of request to Tony from the military. Licences for that leaked repulsor technology, perhaps. I don't think he would take very well to that.”

“Damn it, Pep-” James's voice goes scratchy with emotion- “you think I enjoy being official messenger boy? You think I like it that every time Tony gets all stubborn and refuses to play ball, the bosses immediately think, oh, let's use his friendship with Rhodes? You think I like wondering if I got my job on my own merits, or if I'm just here because of him?”

“I don't know, James. But I'm going to give this phone to Tony now, and I want you to tell him something he'll actually be happy to hear. You're a smart man, I'm sure you can come up with something.”

She has a feeling she'll be getting one less Christmas card this year. Oh well. She'll just be happy if the world survives until Christmas.

 

* * *

 

  
Pepper hopes whatever James told Tony was nice, because he is definitely not pleased to hear about Natasha's favor. “Fine,” he says. “For Natasha. And because I want to give Rogers a piece of my mind. Oh, yes.”

That sounds ominous.

Still, compared to the previous day he's coherent and rational. Pepper thinks Tony has calmed down, has dealt with his anger pretty well. This is immediately proven wrong when Happy escorts Natasha, Steve Rogers, and a handsome stranger into the computer lab. Tony goes stiff and puffs up like a cockerel, and Happy, recognizing the signs, disappears. Tony goes straight for Rogers, ignoring the other two.

“You and Fury, who by the way I know is definitely not dead, you both let Natasha take the fall?” he asks. “Un-fucking-believable. I know it's one hundred percent your damn fault a ton of my classified info is out there. I feel it in my bones.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Rogers says, with the calm insouciance that gets under Tony's skin so much.

He opens his mouth, closes it again. Lets out a huff of breath. Opens his mouth again. “I have so many questions to ask you, but let me start with why the hell you didn't come to me. I have been fantasizing about taking down SHIELD for years, okay, I could have made things so much easier for you. So why.”

Steve shrugs. “Fury said not to trust anyone.” He's tired, like he knows the explanation will only make things worse.

“I'm Pepper Potts,” Pepper says to the handsome man in the tight t-shirt.

“Sam Wilson,” he says, offering a hand to shake. “Wow, it's not every day I meet someone from a Forbes cover. Nice to meet you.”

“Fury said not to trust anyone,” Tony repeats. “You- you thought I might have anything to do with this?”

“You helped build the carriers,” Rogers says, and Tony snaps.

“Repulsor tech! I thought that was safe! It's, it's, it's not a weapon, I don't sell weapons any more, and now I'll be damned if I sell my tech or services to anyone, because apparently there is no one who can be trusted with it. Pepper, you're gonna hate me, but we are switching our business plan and you are writing me a new contract. I no longer do consults. I no longer sell my fantastically powerful toys to the highest bidder. It all stays under my control, where I can keep an eye on it, where it's safe. My new toys, I mean, because the blueprints to half my old ones have just been released to the discriminating public. And wasn't that so much fun, finding out Fury had the specs on all my confidential tech. You got all that, Pep?”

“Yes,” Pepper says, quietly. What he's asking for is impossible, of course, but he doesn't need to hear “no” right now.

“You're appointing yourself as the ultimate moral authority?” Rogers asks.

“Yeah, you bet your star spangled ass I am, because I am apparently the _only sane man in the world_. You have a problem with that, cheerleader?”

“I don't know,” Rogers says, and it's suddenly very apparent that his confident front has collapsed, and the person behind it is very, very lost. She guesses the insouciance was there as a cover. “I don't really know much of anything, I guess.”

Pepper looks from him to Sam Wilson. Sam looks very upset. Pepper thinks it must be hard, to have Captain America as your idol and your friend.

Pepper knows that if Tony was thinking clearly he'd recognize his victory and relent. But he's well and truly pissed off now, and on a roll. “I know your gang never thought much of me. I'm just a privileged alcoholic egomaniac who can't follow orders, right? Well maybe that's my best feature. That I don't follow orders from anyone who's not number one.”

“Excuse me,” Pepper says. “I thought I was your boss.”

He finally looks at her. “Pepper,” he says, betrayed. “You're supposed to back me up here.”

“You know you were on HYDRA's kill list,” Rogers says, and Pepper goes cold.

Tony, predictably, scoffs. “I'd like to see them try,” he says.

“I wouldn't,” she says. “Remember what happened last time,” and he blanches, gets that look of “I can't believe what crap I just said and now I hate myself”. She tries not to let it get to her. He needs to learn from his mistakes, and Malibu was a pretty big mistake.

Bruce speaks up for the first time this whole meeting. “I wouldn't really like to see it either. Particularly if I was in the building at the time. I don't think anyone in Manhattan would like to see that.”

“You were on the list too,” says Natasha, quietly. “They probably would have gotten you before you had time to transform.”

Pepper is very glad that Alexander Pierce is already dead. She recognizes it now, the surge of unadulterated emotion that led her to kill Aldritch Killian. She knows it's part of her, not a passing aberration. She knows that if Pierce's missiles hadn't gotten her too he would only have lived just long enough to regret it.

Sam turns to Tony. “We came to ask you for a favor,” he says. “But I don't think you're going to like it.”

“Already done,” Tony says, and he's winding back down, energy draining. “Here.” He hands Pepper the files and the USB stick, and she hands them to Sam. “Every trace I could find of your mysterious metal-armed man. He doesn't know much about hiding in the twenty-first century, I'll tell you that. Hasn't even gotten himself a pair of fake glasses. The last place I picked him up was Baltimore. If he wants to leave the country he'll have to find himself a ship, unless that arm is detachable and he has some way of making himself look less like a really unprofessional drug runner.”

“Thank you,” Sam says. Steve is silent, just looking at the files in Sam's hands.

“You'll probably want to go after him immediately. I could have booked you a flight but I didn't because I'm still really mad at you. I'm only doing this cause Natasha asked.”

Pepper turns to Natasha. She's small in her big leather jacket. Pepper can still find traces of Natalie Rushman, when she looks, and that gives her hope that Natasha is someone she can get to know. Pepper's still mentally preparing herself for reading the file, but mostly she's just worried it _won't_ change how much she likes this person. “Are you going with them?”

“No,” Natasha says definitively.

“In that case,” Pepper says, smiling, “would you like to stay for dinner?”

Natasha hesitates. She looks, not at Tony, but at Bruce. He raises an eyebrow at her. There's a tension between them, but Pepper doesn't think it's a hostile one. “I'd love to,” she says.

“Great,” Tony says. He's still upset. He's not panicking though. She is very proud of him. “You're my favorite Avenger.”

“Oh, see if I ever do another simulation for you,” Bruce says, but his shoulders are down and he isn't particularly hunched.

Well, that's one small victory at least.

“Fury's not really dead, right,” Tony says to Natasha.

 

* * *

 

  
Pepper sits down at her desk in the morning and takes her laptop out of her bag and stops, suddenly incredibly afraid. Afraid of what? Afraid of herself. Afraid of soft-spoken Pepper Potts who tries her best to be kind.

She has too much power. In this sleek computer, and in her uncalloused hands, the fires of Extremis burning deep beneath the skin.

Tony, she knows, craves power, always wants to have absolute control over every situation, so he can never be hurt. He still has a controlling share in the company but it's Pepper's fingers on the keys, and she knows it's far too late now for both of them. Tony wants to be the white knight but a year ago he used the Iron Man suit to kill a hundred thousand aliens in a brilliant daring act of heroism that still regularly knocks him to the floor in panic. Pepper wants to pretend she's nothing more than a perfect CEO, making the decisions that will best benefit the company, but six months ago she killed Aldritch Killian with a metal-coated fist and three months ago she sat in a SHIELD office and signed nondisclosure agreements.

Pepper has always considered herself pragmatic. Not always _reasonable_ , but pragmatic, a good, solid word. She is at her very core a problem-solver. Twenty years ago she abandoned an art history degree for a steady job as a personal assistant, and from there a chain of choices leads all the way to her, here, in this office.

She opens the laptop, and does her job, as best she knows how to do it.


End file.
